Madhya Pradesh will go to the polls on November 27, 2008 to elect a 230 member state assembly. The outgoing government is a BJP government led by Shivraj Chauhan. The BJP swept to power in the last elections, winning 172 seats with 42.7 % vote as compared to 39 seats for the Congress Party with 31.8 % of the vote. The Congress Party had been in power for 10 years before the 2003 elections.

Madhya Pradesh, even after the carving out of Chattisgarh, is a vast state with different regions including various tribal belts. Out of the 48 districts in the state, 18 have predominantly tribal populations.

There is anger amongst the workers, peasants and other working people at their conditions. BJP came to power with promises to resolve the power crisis, but power situation has gone from bad to worse. Lakhs of peasants along the Narmada Valley project area continue to fight for their rights against forcible displacement. In the tribal areas, adivasi organizations continue to wage struggle for rights.

The main bourgeois parties are trying to communalise the situation in order to win support for themselves, as well as ensure that people do not organise around their own concerns. They are trying to whip up communal polarisation through attacks on churches and masjids, as well as organising bomb blasts etc. Both Congress and BJP have made terrorism a poll plank, accusing Hindus and Muslims and each other of being behind bomb blasts, while covering up that state terrorism is a common policy of the Indian bourgeoisie whom they both serve. Both parties talk of ‘development’ — the BJP of the ‘Gujarat model’ of development and the Congress of Manmohan Singh model of development, trying to create illusions amongst the people that the course of liberalisation and privatisation will actually benefit them.

In Madhya Pradesh, people’s forces are trying to put up a resistance to the kind of development being pushed by the ruling class, as well as to state terrorism and communalisation of the polity. Parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party are also active in some regions of the state. In the Bundelkhand region, there are forces which are fighting the elections on plank of creating a separate state of Bundelkhand. There are parties and organisations organising amongst the tribal population. Communists must actively work to defeat the Congress and BJP and all other forces who are promoting the development model of globalisation through liberalisation and privatisation, all forces which support the communalisation of the polity and state terrorism.